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Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

ianvisits.co.uk

101–110 of 155 posts

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen stations refurbished less than 10 years where the new benches had to be replaced because they were already falling apart after that time outdoors... On my commute they are fitting new cladding to hide a brick wall on an outdoor, not covered, platform. All the studwork is standard timber screwed into the wall. Any water ingress and this will rot quickly. Oh well.

Might be pressure treated timber - looks largely the same as untreated wood from a distance and can last a long time in damp conditions. Many sheds and timber fences are pressure treated and last well - sure they wont last a lifetime or whatever, but will probably not rot "quickly"

There are also some heat treated modified timbers now which don't look like pressure treated sheds or fences but which are supposed to last well.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#102
post #90

Option C to hose down the peasants as they entered the tube station so they didn't scuff the walls was not used.

I’m pretty sure a lot of the discoloration comes from pigments/microplastics from the clothes rubbing against the wall. Look how dark the shoulders of these “ghosts” are. If it were just grease, you’d expect the head part to be darkest.

Hands. The general public's hands... clothes mark far less

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#104
post #17

I noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly clog up. It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience

> It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience Modern software development, and especially UI design, in a nutshell.

[flagged]

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People would pay good money for that stream

Other people would pay good money to watch. Hey, this is sounding like a sustainable business model with real potential!

We should somehow cram AI in it and lure sweet VC money.

Maybe a counter overlay on the stream keeping track of how many people got hosed that day, which would increment using computer vision, GPT and a very expensive production pipeline.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#106
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a negative outcome of the Town and Country Planning Act. We've mandated by law that all planning is done upfront and due to the possibility of construction fraud provide detailed designs to building contractors that disallow them from substituting any materials or design choices without it being explicitly requested by the employer. In theory, there can be conversation between individual subcontractors and th…

If it's your project, you can order the builders to reconfigure the ventilation ducts pretty much however you like. Building control require that an architect sign off on things like the size of the beam holding the roof up. If you change that, the architect will have to sign off on the building as constructed before building control will approve it. Planning permission is given on the basis of external appearance, s…

In a small house you can move outlets. In a large building the space for every wire and pipe is accounted for. Moving the outlet means that the wires to it have to move and in turn that means a plumber later can't come in and put the pipe where it must go. In a house they solve this by having the plumber come in before the electrician (the order is much more complex), but in a large building you need them working at the same time or you will never get done. Even in a house you still need to plan the plumbing as often a pipe and a beam need to go through the same place - either the beam moves or the toilet moves.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#107
post #17

I noticed some other weird design choices in the new tube stations as well. Eg air vents that are very fine and visibly clog up. It’s like they designed it to look shiny for day one but ignored decades of practical experience

This is the obvious outcome when society rewards the manager who boosts the stock price this quarter (at a future cost) more than the manager that makes sure the company will survive for a hundred years.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#108
post #79
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a negative outcome of the Town and Country Planning Act. We've mandated by law that all planning is done upfront and due to the possibility of construction fraud provide detailed designs to building contractors that disallow them from substituting any materials or design choices without it being explicitly requested by the employer. In theory, there can be conversation between individual subcontractors and th…

Building is not a waterfall process because of the Planning act. It's waterfall because of the cost structure of building. Every time you iterate physically, you are throwing a lot of money away in time and materials. So any iteration is pushed back to the paper part of the exercise, in which case it might just as well happen before planning approval. Also, it's possible to request a variation, especially if somethin…

Building is - or should be - iterative. However each building is a separate iteration. Once you are done you stop and look at what works and what doesn't, then adjust the next one. The more you make your building different/unique from what everyone else around you is doing the more expensive it will be as nobody knows what changes really work - and even if they are for the better the lack of experience means you are paying extra for the laborers to figure out how to do things.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#109
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely it should be simple enough to look at what alterations have been made on other lines already and start off from a basis that is at least as good.

The design and planning process for UK infrastructure is already notoriously expensive and we already do significantly more "planning" than we used to do 100 years ago (when we were actually capable of rapidly building high quality infrastructure). I would expect there to already be consultants doing similar to what you've suggested however the work is complex and many will be quite cut-off from the build process or…

while 100 years ago we built rapidly, there was a large cost in human lives. Planning is part of how we solved that - only part of it, but it is a factor.

Re: Elizabeth line testing ways of banishing its "ghosts in the walls"

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat generated by the LED ads is tiny compared to the heat generated by the actual trains and I think they handled that one very well.

Generally agreed. In DC we had a similar change over. My complaint is just that it is incredibly tacky. It's much brighter than ambient lighting is. Our metro system is facing a huge budget crunch (the Feds stopping COVID money, and the 2.5 states involved have been very unhelpful at providing funding). I get that advertising is an appealing revenue stream. I just wish we could do it in a way that wasn't so rambuncti…

Transport for London's [1] revenue should be £9100 million this year. Revenue from advertising was £130 million last year, so around 1.5%.

It would be nicer if they would just end the advertising.

[1] London Underground (metro), several within-London urban and suburban rail lines, buses, trams, river ferries, major roads

https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2023/march/...

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-advertising-annual-report-aug...

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